Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Rush - May 12th, 2015 (XCel Energy Center, St.Paul, MN

setlist.fm

Time is not available to write up most of the details of this show this morning before I got to work.

I'll just include a couple of bullet points:

-Jacob's Ladder and to a lesser extent Distant Early Warning were long awaited and well worth it.
-Hemispheres intro was nice, although almost like a tease. I would have swapped out most of the rest of the set just to see the whole thing, or even they included the final movement and the "We Will Call You Cygnus, the God of Balance You Shall Be"
-Neil's tendinitis may have this be the final show or at least tour. 8 straight shows in Minnesota for me. It may be the last, or if they do 1 more US leg on this R40 tour, maybe the 1st of their last 2.
-I of couse sat next to a guy and his buddy who would not shut the fuck up nearly the whole night. I frequently seem to have this happen. Every 30 seconds "Yuhhhhhhh" they were likely drunk anyway. He kept pointing his hand right next to my face, lol. Very annoying, but I for the most part avoided confrontation, in the interest of being there to focus on the music.
-The sound at the X, honestly sounded a fair amount too Target Center-like. WAY too much REVERB and terribly mixed. I have seen many shows at the X, and this may have had the poorest mix of all of them. It also reminded me of some of those Dream Theater concerts at the State Theatre. Although I think it got better by the end, but for most of last night's show, the mix was very poor. At times I could barely hear Geddy.
-Medley's Schmedley's to quote John Petrucci. Rush always does them and always plays the 3+ hour shows.
-Gotta go, but I have 1 or 2 Rush concert entries I'd love to post in here. Maybe 1 being a DREAM setlist..ala if I could pick a setlist. And in this tour's case, take a track or 2 from each album going back chronologically.
-We did get Natural Science and Jacob's Ladder which was surprising..I love NS, and would trade it for The Camera Eye and even Between the Wheels at this point, so I was happy to see. I also liked Animate live..although so many other Counterparts songs I'd love to see (Double Agent, Alien Shore namely).


Set 1
Intro
(The World Is... The World Is)
The Anarchist
Clockwork Angels
Headlong Flight
Far Cry
The Main Monkey Business
One Little Victory
Animate
Roll the Bones
Distant Early Warning
Subdivisions

Set 2
Intermission
(No Country for Old Hens)
Tom Sawyer
YYZ
(tour debut)
The Spirit of Radio
Natural Science
(First time played live since 2008, tour debut)
Jacob's Ladder
Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres Part I: Prelude
Cygnus X-1
(The Voyage Part 1 & 3 with drum solo)
Closer to the Heart
Xanadu
2112 Part I: Overture
2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
2112 Part IV: Presentation
2112 Part VII: Grand Finale

Encore:
Lakeside Park
Anthem
What You're Doing
Working Man
(with "Garden Road" outro)
Outro
(Exit Stage Left)